


Deeper Cuts

by Sholio



Category: Iron Fist (TV)
Genre: F/M, Healing, Magic, Stabbing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-09
Updated: 2019-10-09
Packaged: 2020-11-28 04:43:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,287
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20960666
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sholio/pseuds/Sholio
Summary: Colleenknowsthere's something really wrong with him, she just knows it, but she can't get him to let her look until they're away from the fight.





	Deeper Cuts

**Author's Note:**

> Continuing on with the "Whumptober" fics, an anon on Tumblr asked for "Stab Wound" with Danny/Colleen. This is set between seasons.

Colleen _knows_ there's something really wrong with him, she just knows it, but she can't get him to let her look until they're away from the site of the fight and into a narrow alley with a steep set of stone steps. Danny sits carefully on the steps and peels back his coat, and Colleen sucks in her breath at the sight of blood plastering his shirt to his side.

"It's not as bad as it looks?" Danny offers through clenched teeth, and gives her what's probably supposed to be one of his puppy-eyed looks, but it falls flat because of how much pain he's obviously in.

"Why do you keep doing this to yourself," she mutters, and pulls off her scarf, wads it up and presses it against his side.

It's cold here, and Danny is already starting to shiver from a combination of shock, blood loss, and simply having his coat open with the temperature around freezing and an icy wind knifing down the alley. And also, two Hand got away and they might still be around here. Their hostel is all the way on the other side of town. And anyway ...

"You need a doctor," she says.

Danny shakes his head. "I'll be okay. I can heal myself."

"Are you sure?"

He manages a wan smile. "I healed you, didn't I?"

Colleen wants desperately to argue. It's _different_ \-- she remembers what happened to him afterwards, and he wasn't having to concentrate through pain and shock.

But she knows how intractable Danny can get about these things, and the last thing she wants is to watch him go downhill while she fights with him about it.

"Okay, fine. But we're going somewhere warm first."

He grimaces as she helps him to his feet, one of his arms draped over her shoulders. There's blood on the steps where he was sitting; he presses his other hand to his side, slumping against her. And she knows right then and there that they aren't going to make it all the way to the hostel. He can't walk that far, and she's not sure about trying to get him onto one of the handful of crowded buses that ply the streets of this mountain town.

"Danny, I need your help," she says, nudging him. "We need someplace with a room. Anywhere with a vacancy. And I don't read Nepali."

"Neither do I, much," he mutters, hanging onto her. They lurch out onto the street and she desperately hopes they aren't as conspicuous as she feels. It's late in the afternoon, and there aren't too many people about.

"More than I do."

And he does: they only have to walk for a block or so before Danny points out a house with a sign for a room for rent. Colleen leaves him slumped in a doorway, checks herself carefully for blood, and then has a brief, mostly gestural exchange with the woman who owns the house. She ends up giving the woman most of her money and knows she's been absolutely cheated, but she doesn't begrudge it; Danny has plenty more, and she knows the woman pegged them as "tourists with money" as soon as Colleen walked across the street.

She goes and fetches Danny. "No drunks," the woman says.

"He's not drunk. Sick. Altitude." She tries to gesture it and gives up. "Room?"

The room is small, but clean and warm, up in the house's cramped attic with a small window looking down on the street. It's a good location, Colleen thinks as she eases Danny onto the room's single narrow bed. They can see anyone coming, and the only way up to the attic is a ladder -- a desperate struggle for Danny (she had to boost him from below) but useful for defense. 

Now if only all their things weren't across town at the hostel.

She goes downstairs and begs a bowl of water. It's cold from the well, and their landlady doesn't seem to understand her gestured requests to have it warmed up. She gives up and goes back upstairs, climbing carefully, the bowl held against her side.

Danny is propped up against the wall, peeling the blood-soaked shirt and scarf away from his side with small gasps of pain. "You could have waited," Colleen says, sitting beside him. "Give me that." She takes the scarf, dips it in the water, and tries to clean some of the blood away so they can see what they're dealing with.

Oh, it's bad. It looks like it went in deep, and it's still bleeding, hardly even starting to clot. His coat is ruined, and the blankets under him will never be the same. Danny might not be, either. Peritonitis, she thinks, at the very least. "Danny, are you _sure_ \--"

"I'm sure." His voice is shaky, but it has that core of unshakable confidence she both loves and, occasionally, loathes. "I ... I just need to get -- lying down, maybe ..."

She helps him lie on the bed, with his coat to shield its worn wool blankets against the worst of the mess, though for what they're paying for the room, their landlady could replace the entire bed five times over. And then she lays down beside him, cuddled up against him, and wraps her arms around him, one under his neck, the other over his chest.

"Is this a problem?" she asks quietly. "Should I leave?"

"No," he whispers. "Stay."

She puts her hand over his, guides it to the site of the injury. He clamps his hand over his bleeding side, and she keeps her hand there, pressed to his, as his warm blood wells up between both their fingers.

Light comes up slowly, seeping through her fingers, painting the walls of the room in gold. It's warm, like molten honey pooling under her palm and soaking into her skin. It fills the room like a bonfire -- and it _is,_ she thinks; it's a fire made of the warm gold essence that is Danny.

His shivering against her slowly ebbs, and he turns his face into her neck, breathing heavily against her skin.

"Danny?" she whispers.

He mumbles something that might be "'m okay," but it's hard to tell. And then the light slowly dies. The room seems suddenly dark, lit only by the small window, and colder, with just the heat coming up from the opening to the floor below.

"Danny!"

He's utterly limp against her, and she sits up anxiously and paws at his side. Under the blood, she finds only intact skin, pierced with a raw purple scar. She clasps his hands, finds them ice cold, but his pulse is regular, his breathing shallow but steady.

"Danny," she sighs, sinking back down, and holds him for a minute, pressing their foreheads together. 

When she can bring herself to be separated from him, if only temporarily, she gets up and wets her scarf again, using it and the bowl of red-swirled water to clean the worst of the gore from her hands and his side. Then she peels off his coat and shirt, leaving them in a heap by the bed, and the bloodstained pants follow. She strips down to her underwear as well, and pulls the wool blankets over the two of them.

It's too early to sleep, but she doesn't really want that anyway. She only wants to lie here and hold him, while both of them warm slowly under the covers.

"You idiot," she murmurs, brushing a curl away from his forehead, and presses a kiss to his temple before lowering her head to the pillow and just holding him, breathing in the smell of his hair, being with him, relearning how to be okay.


End file.
